Dive Brief
- The United States Army announced Wednesday that it has selected five companies to deploy 1-MW to 20-MW nuclear microreactors at military installations across the country to provide resilient power for critical infrastructure while remaining connected to the broader grid under normal conditions.
- The Army’s Janus program will provide milestone-based federal funding for the companies to develop contractor‑owned and operated assets. Under the agreements, Antares Nuclear and Radiant Industries are slated to build three reactors at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and Fort Benning, Georgia, respectively. The other three companies have contracts for one reactor each: BWX Technologies at Fort Campbell, Kentucky; General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems at Fort Hood, Texas; and Westinghouse Government Services at Fort Drum, New York.
- The investment model combines approximately $2.2 billion in federal funding from fiscal years 2027 through 2031, with private investment from each vendor expected to make up the majority of total project costs. “The goal is to have companies that can stand up on their own afterwards without government subsidies,” Jeff Waksman, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment, told reporters.
Dive Insight
The Army's microreactor program could give a handful of advanced nuclear developers something the industry has struggled to secure: a major, committed early customer capable of helping absorb some of the financial and technical risks associated with first-of-a-kind deployments.
The Army is not simply buying reactors outright. The Defense Innovation Unit is using other transaction authority agreements with fixed-price, milestone-based payments modeled in part on NASA's partnership with SpaceX, Army officials said during a media roundtable Wednesday.
The agreements cover the engineering, qualification, regulatory work and construction needed to get the initial microreactors built, as well as their first year of operation. After that, the projects are expected to transition to Army power purchase agreements or other long-term offtake arrangements, Waksman told Utility Dive.
Government funding is intended to help companies overcome the additional costs and risks of developing and deploying early commercial units, but officials said the federal money is not structured as a conventional cost-sharing arrangement.
Waksman said officials anticipate private capital to total “billions of dollars” and ultimately account for the majority of overall investment, but the Army did not provide a precise figure because companies are “still working to raise money off of this announcement.”
Army officials framed the program as more than a technology demonstration, saying the goal is to develop reactors capable of producing reliable electricity for years and ultimately support commercial sales.
"The Janus Program will be a complete success when and only when we have assisted multiple nuclear companies in developing truly reliable and affordable nuclear microreactors which they can sell to other buyers beyond just the military," Waksman said in the Army's announcement.
The Army said collaboration with utilities will be essential to its nuclear strategy and invited them to work with the government on future utility-scale, grid-facing generation located on Army installations.
For initial projects, the reactors are designed primarily around installation resilience. Officials said the units will remain connected to the grid but could provide backup power if service is disrupted.
The generation IV microreactors selected for the program are designed as “inherently safe” systems that shut down on their own without relying on external power or diesel generators, using natural air circulation to remove heat in an emergency, officials said.
The Army also emphasized that no long-term nuclear waste will remain on installations. All spent fuel and other radiological material must be removed from a site within two years of a reactor shutting down under a planned, Pentagon-wide waste agreement the Army is negotiating with the Department of Energy.
While the units will operate under an Army regulatory process rather than the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Waksman said the service is working closely with the DOE and the NRC to align standards so companies can more easily pursue licenses and broader commercial deployment after proving out their designs on Army bases.
Waksman said all five designs will use encapsulated nuclear fuel, with tristructural isotropic, or TRISO, fuel the likely choice because it is already qualified and in production. The reactors will need high‑assay low‑enriched uranium, or HALEU, which DOE is expected to supply initially by downblending existing stockpiles. But fueling more than 20 units could strain limited U.S. supplies, Waksman said, even as DOE has committed about $2.7 billion to expand enrichment capacity.
The Army, which launched Janus in October 2025, is targeting at least one operational reactor by Sept. 30, 2028. Three awardees — Antares, Radiant and Westinghouse — were also among the companies the Air Force and Defense Innovation Unit selected to develop microreactors at three Air Force bases.
Although individual company schedules vary, the program aims to eventually deliver more than 20 reactors across various sites within five years. Success in this domestic deployment is intended to pave the way for potential future use in remote or austere locations such as Alaska or U.S. Pacific island outposts, according to Waksman.
